


Strange Treaties

by not_whelmed_yet



Series: CyWhirl Week [2]
Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: ;), Alternate Universe - Arranged Marriage, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Ficlet, Kissing, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-01
Updated: 2020-04-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:14:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23423014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/not_whelmed_yet/pseuds/not_whelmed_yet
Summary: Rung has an idea to get Whirl out of jail and off planet. All he has to do is pretend to be the conjunx of the the newly appointed ambassador to Caminus.
Relationships: Cyclonus/Whirl (Transformers)
Series: CyWhirl Week [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1684027
Comments: 21
Kudos: 95
Collections: Lynn's Flashfiction & Oneshots





	Strange Treaties

**Author's Note:**

> is this edited at all? no! is this within my planned word count? definitely not! did I make my "finish by midnight" deadline? that's also gonna be a no
> 
> but it is a arranged fake marriage AU, so i hope that makes up for the rest of it

It was that bleak and dismal time early in the morning when God Emperor Rung showed up in Whirl’s cell. He was wearing his cloak of office, but there was no sign of the holy retinue. He closed the door behind him, gently, no lights on in the hallway outside.

“I thought you were too straight-laced for sneaking around, your Holiness,” Whirl said.

Rung smiled, finally spotting Whirl from his place at the window. “Good morning, Whirl. I hope you’re doing well.”

“Well I’m in prison, so, not my best year. How’s the war going?”

Rung sat down on the berth, dragging the cloak over his lap like a throw blanket. “That’s what I’ve come to talk to you about. We have a chance for peace with the Camien Alliance - there’s been a temporary ceasefire and we’re in the midst of treaty negotiations.”

Whirl tapped his claws together in mocking applause. “Wonderful, that’s cool. I’ll enjoy being in prison for the rest of my life a lot more knowing that nobody’s going to bomb a convenient hole in the wall of my cell.”

“Whirl.” Rung’s face crumpled like a building under canon-fire and it wasn’t _fair_ that someone could be both so annoyingly virtuous and still make Whirl feel guilty for being mean. “If I could have, you would already be free. That’s why I’m here now - there’s a chance. It’s not a return to the front lines, but it’s a way out of this cell.”

Whirl considered the dim grey light outside and the manner in which Rung had appeared in his cell. “You’re scheming,” Whirl pronounced. “This is a scheme.”

“The Camiens want to guarantee the treaty with an exchange of ambassadors. The council wants to refuse, they think this is a scheme to kidnap and torture our intelligence secrets out of our high ranking diplomats.”

“Ah, just what I’ve always wanted. To be kidnapped and tortured by the Camiens.”

“I believe they intend no such thing.” Rung said. He frowned. “There’s always a chance I’m wrong to trust them. I’ve been told I should stop trusting.”

“People telling you that usually mean ‘stop trusting everyone except me’. Don’t listen to them, Glasses. You’re the goddamn God Emperor.”

“I wish I could keep you in my counsel,” Rung sighed. “But I think this is our best chance. We send you both as ambassadors, sealing the treaty. You don’t know any state secrets, the council can hardly refuse.”

“Hold on,” Whirl held up a claw. “Mission into certain death I’m fine with, but what do you mean ‘you both’?”

“Ah.” Rung fidgeted with the hem of his cloak nervously. “Apparently the Camiens believe that a proper ambassadorship consists of a bonded pair of conjunx endurae. That was part of the difficulty in finding a legitimate ambassador. But don’t worry - we can fake the provenance of your conjunx ritus.”

“Okay, so all I have to do is go into exile on another planet and pretend to both be a member of the leading elite and married while acting as a diplomat? No offense, Glasses, but have you considered seeing a shrink? Someone besides yourself in a mirror.”

“Your partner would be covering most of the diplomacy,” Rung said calmly.

“Oh. My ‘partner’. And who would that be?” Whirl asked.

“Cyclonus of Upper Tetrahex.”

“Who?”

* * *

Cyclonus of Upper Tetrahex, as it turned out, was a nerd. He was a handsome nerd, at least. It was important that it was believable to the Camiens that they were bonded and Whirl was obviously a catch. So Cyclonus was handsome, sure. Armored frame, sharp fangs, a constant air of danger when he pinned you with those piercing eyes of his.

Whirl would be more impressed if he ever did anything besides stare at Whirl and read datapads on Camien culture. It was going to be hard to pretend to be conjunxes when the mech clearly loathed Whirl.

“So.” Whirl decided he would give it another whirl (ha ha) at making friends. He climbed over the empty cabin seat to perch up on the backrest and propped his chin up on his hands. “I can’t figure you out. War criminal or political prisoner?”

Cyclonus flicked his gaze up, red optics skirting over Whirl’s face and then dropping back to his datapad.

“You can’t ignore me forever, you know. Eventually we’ll be on Caminus and then we’ll need to know enough about each other to keep up a convincing cover story,” Whirl said.

“Yes.” Cyclonus agreed, his voice a surprisingly warm rumble. “Eventually we will be on _Caminus_ and we will need to act as believable ambassadors.”

“I don’t know if Rung told you, but we’re not really ambassadors. More like ‘ambassadors’. You know, with scare-quotes. We’re really just there so the Camiens have someone to murder if the folks back home break the treaty.”

“Primus.”

“Primus what?”

“You should be more respectful of your god,” Cyclonus said.

“Oh. We’re old friends, he lets me call him Rung. It’s a long story. So: which was it? War criminal or political prisoner?”

Cyclonus picked up his datapad again and resumed reading. “There is nothing stopping you from educating yourself,” he said.

“Rung promised me that you’d be the one doing all the pomp and circumstance. I’m just here to look beautiful,” Whirl said, draping himself over the cabin seat dramatically.

* * *

The shuttle was self-piloting, of course, to stop them from getting cold feet. Not that it mattered, Whirl had figured out within twenty minutes that Cyclonus was taking this gig more seriously than a diagnosis of Cybercrosis. He would have vetoed any escape attempts.

Still, self-piloting or not, it had a little piloting area ahead of the passenger cabin. Whirl preferred to sit there, where he could put his feet up on the instrument panel and watch the stars. He was enjoying a nice relaxing nap there when Cyclonus finally broke his vow of silence.

“Whirl.”

Whirl, not expecting to hear his own name spoken by a mech who hadn’t said anything to him in days, was a little surprised. A trifle startled. He might have jumped and disturbed the delicate balancing act that was his preferred napping posture, and ended up sliding out of the chair onto his aft. Might have.

Before he could get himself back upright, Cyclonus offered him a hand up, looking rather sheepish. It was the first hint of emotion Whirl had detected in his stupidly handsome face except ‘annoyance’. He’d detected an absolute fuck-ton of annoyance over the past few weeks. “Apologies,” Cyclonus said. Absolutely baffling. The only possible explanation was that during the time Whirl had been napping someone had abducted Cyclonus and shadowplayed him into a bot with manners. Or maybe he had an identical frame-twin.

“Everything okay?” Whirl asked. “We’re not about to die, are we?”

Cyclonus glanced around the dim shuttle. “Why would we be dying?”

“Dunno, just figured you weren’t going to talk to me unless it was life or death.” Whirl said.

Cyclonus let go of Whirl’s claw and stepped back. “I did not mean to cause offense. I have been...thinking. This is not a set of circumstances I envisioned for myself.”

“It’s okay,” Whirl said, sitting back down in his chair and propping one foot, then the other, up on the control panel. “I get it. Guy looks like me, people get grossed out.” He snapped a claw together for emphasis. “Wouldn’t be punishment if empurata made people like the look of you.”

“Not that.” Cyclonus said, waving off several weeks of anxiety as if it wasn’t even worth considering. “I know Primus offered me this mission as a mercy, and I will not fail him. I just don’t understand why you’re here.”

“You don’t seem like you’re especially bothered by boredom, so I don’t see how - what was going to happen to you if you stayed?”

Cyclonus turned to look out the viewscreen at the oncoming stars. “I would have been executed by now, I expect.”

“Slagging gear-strippers, for _what_?”

“I died and allowed myself to be possessed by a malevolent force. Under it’s compulsion I killed hundreds of people and tried to destroy the planet,” Cyclonus said, as if he was announcing the weather forecast.

“You’re _dead_?” This was what happened when you went to prison during a war. People forgot to tell you nice, helpful, important facts like _oh yes, the mech we’re sending you off to another planet with is dead and possibly possessed._

“Oh no. Vector Sigma remade me, which was quite politically inconvenient for everyone.” Cyclonus sighed. “In my reading...Camiens expect a certain amount of physical affection between conjunxes. If we seem as strangers they are unlikely to believe that we have a legitimate conjunx endura bond.”

“Uh, yes? I imagine so.” Whirl said. “Is this news to you?”

“I don’t know what Primus intended me to do.”

“Hopefully develop some acting chops?”

“Whirl, I understand that this is all quite amusing to you,” Cyclonus said, finally turning on him. “But I am the one being asked to publicly cosset Primus’s lover!”

If Whirl had had a jaw, that jaw would have been on the floor. “Wait.” He started laughing, hysterical wheezes that only intensified as Cyclonus kept _staring_ at him like...like he was the paramour of a living god. “Where did you ever get the idea that me and Rung - what even - how?”

“You do not speak of each other like a god and disciple, nor like a Prime and citizen. You have _pet names_ for him. He has sent you here, despite you having no apparent utility as an ambassador or a spy. When we left he asked me to take care of you on his behalf and said that he had ‘deep love’ for you. What other explanation is there than a lover whom he trusts above all others to watch me for my obedience?”

“Cyclonus, he’s allowed to have friends. That’s all I am. A friend. A friend who made some shitty choices and ended up in jail. He knows I go stir crazy when I’m cooped up but he’s too agonizingly principled to pardon me because I’m his friend.”

Cyclonus sank down into the copilot’s seat and buried his face in his hands. “I can’t do this. This is all far too much. Colonies and Titans and gods with friends.”

“I mean, I am flattered. Very flattered.” Whirl said. He thought for a minute. “Back when you thought I was Rung’s lover, what were you working yourself up to asking?”

Cyclonus groaned. “Ten years of this? Maybe we’ll be caught out and executed on the spot.”

“Hey now, who was taking this job all seriously? That’s right - you. No fatalism allowed, Mr. Professional Ambassador, you’ve got to see this mission through for God and Planet.”

Whirl had delivered that speech in his most sarcastic drawl, but apparently Cyclonus was immune to sarcasm. He sat up straight as a board, gripping his knees with his hands. “You’re right. The mission is peace on Cybertron and there is nothing more important. I think, for our cover story, that we should practice being...conjunxes.”

“You want to practice kissing?” Whirl asked.

Cyclonus flushed an even deeper shade of purple. “I was thinking of hand-holding. Is that expected? In public?”

“Well I don’t know about Caminus, but on Cybertron conjunxes kiss in public all the time.” How old was this guy? Something for Whirl to follow up on later. Right now, he was reevaluating the amount of fun that could be had in a ten year sentence of pretending to have a conjunx.

“Perhaps we could work our way up to that,” Cyclonus suggested.

* * *

“Well met, honorable ambassadors from Caminus,” Cyclonus said. He bowed. Whirl waved.

The bonded ambassadors - Cityspeaker Windblade and Chromia (just plain Chromia, apparently they didn’t have enough citizens to need by-names) - bowed from their place on the other side of the airlock. The shuttles had met at the midpoint between the two planets to exchange hostages. The Camien shuttle would take them the rest of the way and their shuttle would carry the Camien ambassadors back to Cybertron.

The Camien ambassadors were cute, if not especially talkative. Whirl could tell Cyclonus was watching them keenly for any elements of their body language to copy.

“You know, they’re probably going to call home after this,” Whirl murmured to him as the doors closed between the ships. “We should give them something to talk about when they call.”

“It is rather too late to give anything to the ambassadors, they just triggered the airlock,” Cyclonus said.

“I meant you should take this chance to practice your ‘kissing in public’ skills,” Whirl said.

“In front of the ambassadors?” Cyclonus repeated, aghast.

Whirl didn’t know why getting Cyclonus all flustered like this made his spark twist in pleasure. He’d always liked getting a rise out of people, maybe he’d just forgotten what it felt like in prison. Sliding one leg over Cyclonus’s hip, he used a claw to tilt his face towards him. “Like I said, give them something to mention on their call home. Maybe save us doing this in front of a bigger crowd later.”

Cyclonus steeled himself (and oh yeah, Whirl didn’t miss that he did that every time they practiced kissing. ‘Didn’t care about empurata’ his _aft_ ) and leaned close, draping one arm around Whirl’s waist and leaving the other resting lightly against the back of his neck. He pressed their faces together, cheek to cheek, lips barely brushing the plating at the place where Whirl’s neck met his helm.

Whirl glanced at the airlock window to give the ambassadors a wink, but the solar screen had already slid closed, blocking them from view.

He decided not to mention that to Cyclonus yet.

* * *

There were a number of similarities between being kept as a hostage on a faraway planet and being in prison. Most people you encountered treated you with barely-concealed hostility. The food was _awful_. News came slowly, you were pretty much certain all your correspondence was being read before it got to you, visits from friends were nonexistent.

On the other hand, being on Caminus sucked a lot less. For one thing, Whirl was allowed to go (mostly) wherever he pleased, as long as he kept to the public streets and airways. Being able to spin his rotors and get some air helped a lot with the twitchy going-to-die jitters.

And then there was Cyclonus. It’d taken Whirl months to figure Cyclonus out, like an off-model chrono that you couldn’t treat like a standard timepiece or it’d jam up. Cyclonus was a constant source of insight into the politics and culture around them, with a scathing wit and eye for cultural critique. Whirl had seen fliers for an operatic performance that sounded _abysmal_ , he was going to figure out some way to get them tickets so he could hear Cyclonus excoriate it later.

The Camiens, more trusting than Whirl would have expected after the war, even let them use one of the practice courts for the city guard for their sparring practice. Every evening at just before sunset, because Cyclonus was a creature of habit. He spent his mornings in the library, his afternoons viewing the parliamentary sessions or in meetings with the Camien politicians. Then they’d meet up to spar and Whirl got him for the rest of the night.

Whirl was a little early, but there were steam baths in the practice hall where you could relax and loosen up before your practice session. Whirl had just started stretching when he heard Cyclonus talking to someone outside the doorway to the steam baths.

“I do not know what you are implying, but I promise you there is no truth to these rumors you may have heard,” Cyclonus murmured.

“I’m implying that you’re bored stiff with your conjunx. You’re so stiff around him I’d barely believe you were Amicas if I hadn’t seen the papers myself. I mean, he’s clearly in love with _you_ but I thought maybe you were looking for a lover who’s a little more...hands on.”

“You thought incorrectly,” Cyclonus said. “Is it really so unbelievable that I love him, Firestar?”

“I’ve never seen any indication that you even like him.”

“And you are the arbiter of truth here?” Cyclonus asked. “Some people prefer to keep their private feelings to themselves, you know. Back in my day, it was considered most unseemly to talk about your conjunx in public.”

“Are you sure that’s a no?”

“Please remove your hand from my person,” Cyclonus said stiffly. “And tell the Mistress of the Flame that if she sends one more spy to seduce me or frame me for infidelity I will be forced to speak to my conjunx about this. And he will _relish_ the excuse to very publicly display our affections in public, wherever we think it might most personally embarrass her.”

Whirl waited until he heard Firestar’s footsteps retreat across the room and the door creak before he walked out to join Cyclonus. “So I hear you like me,” he said cheerily.

“I am your conjunx,” Cyclonus said shortly. “Were you listening in the whole time?”

“I’m your conjunx _and you like me_ ,” Whirl crowed, slinging his arm around Cyclonus’s neck.

Cyclonus stared at him, exasperated. “ _Yes, Whirl, I like you._ Was this only obvious to me?”

“Mm, I’ve been told the best way to tell people things is with your words. It’s one of the things mouths are good for. One of the two things.”

Cyclonus sighed. Then he bent down for a moment and caught Whirl underneath the thighs, lifting him against his chest. Whirl kicked his feet, as Cyclonus walked them up against one of the walls. Getting a rise out of Cyclonus never got old.

“Our position here does not require that I lie to you,” Cyclonus growled against Whirl’s neck. “If I tell you I love you, it’s because it’s the truth.”

Whirl suspected if he said _yeah, I know, I was just messing with you because I love it when you get possessive_ Cyclonus would probably drop him on the floor and refuse Whirl’s pre-sparring kiss. Instead he said, “and you’re not even a little tempted by any of the Mistress’s spies? I don’t know, Firestar is pretty smoking - “

Cyclonus kissed him in that sensitive spot under the base of his helm and Whirl rather lost his train of thought. When Cyclonus finally let him down, Whirl decided it was a good moment for a public confession. “I do feel like I should tell you, in the event we ever get back in Cybertron. Conjunxes do not actually kiss in public all the time there. People are actually quite touchy about public displays of affection.”

Cyclonus grinned. “Little Bird, I already knew that. Lucky for us, then, that we're on Caminus.”  
  
“Wait, when did you figure that out?” Whirl protested.

“I sent Rung a message inquiring about it before we met up with the Ambassadors' shuttle,” Cyclonus said. “Quite the knave you are, stringing me along like that. Oh, I always did fall for the bots that were up to no good.”

“Well in my defense you are _very_ good at kissing and - hey! What is that supposed to mean?” 

**Author's Note:**

> As always with my one-day ficlets, there's probably typos and grammar things I missed (feel free to point me at any mistakes you notice)
> 
> As always, I love comments and you can find me online @notwhelmedyet. Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed 💕


End file.
